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The blog of designer/illustrator Aldous Massie.

In late 2012, I was asked by Daniel “Faz” Farrell at Have Skateboards to design a board graphic to celebrate recent collaborations between Have and Surry Hills clothing label Halfsleeve. The illustration is of the Hyde Park bench—a popular skateboarding location in Sydney. The images below show the original drawing—ink spanning four A4 pages.

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Unfortunately, the graphic was never printed onto a deck due to technical issues and timing.
View the mock-up of the skateboard deck here.

Late last year, I was asked to illustrate a coaster for el Jimador—a tequila company that employs bold visuals based on Mexican culture. A top view of a Mexican wrestling ring was drawn around perforations, creating an arena for “thumb wrestling”.

The coaster, while functioning with its original intention, is also used in various promotional events including el Jimador thumb wrestling competitions. The images below show the preliminary sketch, the final illustration, and the coaster in use.

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Creative direction from Adrian McNamara at Naked Communications.
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Recently, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Apis Cera, a Parisian company that makes candles from pure beeswax by hand.
With the direction of owner Charles van Valkenburg, labels for the candle packaging and illustrations for accompanying cards were created.

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Art direction: Charles van Valkenburg
Apis Cera, 2013

Early this year, I was commissioned to create vector illustrations for Spanish wine company Campo Viejo.
The illustrations were to be quirky and stylised, while being representational of both the brand and the location of the advertisement.

The three illustrations were representative of London (specifically), America, and Spain:

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The illustrations were created in Adobe Illustrator, with textures added in Adobe Photoshop.
Creative direction by Tim Batterham at Naked Communications. 2013.

Early February, I was commissioned by Brooklyn agency Doubleday & Cartwright to participate in a special exhibition for Nike to celebrate Michael Jordan’s 50th birthday.

50 artists from around the world were each given one of fifty of Jordan’s greatest moments. I was asked to illustrate an interpretation of the birth of the Air Jordan “Jumpman” silhouette.
The illustration is a depiction of the original photograph, which was attached as a tag on the first Air Jordan shoes.

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Compositional sketch with pencil on paper.

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Final artwork, which prints at 11″ by 14″.

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The artwork was exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston on the 17th of February, 2013.
Official photos from the exhibition have not yet been released, but I found this on Instagram (you can see the artwork if you squint).

This is the second concept for Eibol Music‘s New Fast Automatic album. Their upcoming release is a hip–hop album comprised mostly of synths and hard–knocking drums. The lyrics map out a time where the world has built its society based on technological advancements but ponders the likely outcome of technological failure.

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The second concept shows an X–ray snapshot of two hands. While on the exterior, both hands would appear similar, the snapshot reveals that one is man and one is machine. The human hand is reaching for help, representing man’s unknowing dependence on machine/technology. The roaches crawling on the skeleton of the machine symbolise the invisible decay of technology and man’s impending doom—the consequence of relying so heavily on something approaching death.

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This is a work–in–progress.
The first concept for the same album can be viewed here.

Back in August 2010, I worked with Chen Lu on a Hermès window display for the J’aime Mon Carre (I Love my Scarf) project launch. The job required the collaging and arranging of images in order to create a rich, vibrant shop–front.

The images below show the layering process (on Adobe Illustrator) for the London themed window:

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Other city themes included NY, Paris, and Tokyo.

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The images displayed are of the Sydney Hermes store, and were photographed by Simon Portbury. Matching window displays were also used in Surfer’s Paradise and Marina Mirage.
Art direction: Chen Lu

View my other Hermès projects on my folio.

This is a nerdy personal project. It’s work–in–progress fan art of Ornstein and Smough from From Software‘s videogame Dark Souls.
The sketches below are mainly compositional studies, and have been rendered in fine–liners, pencils, a Pentel Brush Pen, and a gold marker. Digital progress is done on Adobe Photoshop.

The goal is to render them in a similar fashion to the final prints from the Rainbow Serpent series, with a matching O+S logo.

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I’ll post more progress as it comes.

I plan on giving away a free A2 high–res downloadable PDF to Dark Souls fans.
Please visit my Facebook page here, Like the page and leave a Dark Souls related comment (so I know you’re a fan) and I’ll send you the print when it’s complete.

Yesterday, I started working on an album cover for Eibol Music. Their upcoming release is a hip–hop album comprised mostly of synths and hard–knocking drums. The lyrics map out a time where the world has built its society based on technological advancements but ponders the likely outcome of technological failure.

Concept 1

The first concept displays the world post–failure. Mankind’s pride and ambition (marked by a tendency to build enormous, lasting versions of the self) has crumbled away. The decay mimics and distorts The Creation of Adam—not even The Hand of God‘s touch is immune to time, the damage subsequently halting Creation.

A figure and their child watch the sunset (or sunrise?) over an abandoned city and think of the past and future.

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I worked on images for SHAYLI‘s Spring/Summer 2012/2013 editorial late last year.

The images below show the before and after shots.

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[Photography by Jenna Eriksen, hair by Lyndal Salmon, make–up by Nina Kennedy, styled by Jasmine M. Caine, retouching assistance by Hugo Rourke and modeled by Malaan from Darley Management. Clothes were designed by Shayli Harrison.]

I then put together a web design mock–up (with the finished editorial shots above playing a large role aesthetically). This was done earlier this week:

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View SHAYLI branding/identity here.

In September 2012, I created illustrations for Chambord liqueur under the direction of Adrian McNamara of Naked Communications. The images below show rough concept sketches, an early direction of the illustrations and the final art.

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The illustrations were created with pencil, pen and ink, watercolour, and Adobe Photoshop.

The images above are from Cleo, Harper’s Bazaar and Grazia.

In late 2012, I was asked by Daniel “Faz” Farrell at Have Skateboards to design a board graphic to celebrate recent collaborations between Have and Surry Hills clothing label Halfsleeve. The illustration is of the Hyde Park bench—a popular skateboarding location in Sydney.

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Unfortunately, the graphic was never printed due to technical issues and timing.
It was created with pen and ink on paper.

Recently, I’ve been lucky enough to have very talented musicians purchase the rights to my images for use for album covers, posters, and other collateral. Tim Shiel of Gotye used The Tick of Approval P.2 for his Remixes album, and Paulie Jan used Rebirth P.1 for his Humian EP.

Tim Shiel AKA Faux Pas/The Tick of Approval P.2:
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Paulie Jan’s Humian EP/Rebirth P.1:

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In mid-2012, I was commissioned by American author Vincent N. Perales to design a book cover for Nightmare Me.

The story involves a woman who sees distorted nightmarish realities, one which includes visions of a monstrous doppelgänger that eats her victims. The idea was to have a portrait of the dual personalities of this character split in a way that both correlated with and strengthened the title text.

First, the portrait of the woman was painted with acrylics onto textured A4 paper. She was painted in a way to make her face look as if it was pressed against glass. The lettering was painted with white acrylic onto glass obtained from a picture frame.

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The painting was then scanned, and changes were made digitally with Adobe Photoshop—the most notable being the splitting and swapping of the image’s vertical order. The manipulated image was then printed, before being scanned simultaneously with the glass. Blu-tak was used to correctly align the paper and glass during the scan.

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The scan was digitally manipulated again to correct levels, brightness and contrast amongst other things. The shadow created by the scanner’s light and the thickness of the glass panel was unintentional, but worked to add subtle depth.

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